A intertextualized poem by the best New England poet I know personally and a favorite former colleague! Also printing this for National Poetry Month (rapidly receding) and as an homage to Joe Posnanski's Literary Ramblings.
Neither Road Taken.—Richard Lyons, Fleur Carnivore (The Word Works, 2006)
A bright car pulled up where I was walking,
The driver leaning over. I didn't hear his questions,
my arms gesticulated some configuration of streets.
It was winter & ice hung in the branches like a thousand lost
sewing needles descending through the fabric of the afternoon.
It was spring & everything was imminence.
It was summer & the clouds swiftly passed over our heated element.
I told the man I was born beneath the wooden trestle of a train,
that loud noises captured my attention,
not the lefts & rights of destination.
Bearing the white needlepoint of a scar at the base of my neck,
I told him the road to the right was covered in hyacinth,
the one to the left dropped down along the aqueduct to hell.
Choose the oldest, I said to him, choose the oldest.
Winner of the 2005 Washington Prize
Congrats!
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